Is Lutz... Noah?

[Dorrinal Blackmantle]

<blockquote><i>Originally posted by Baron Von Shleppinstein</i><br>What it boils down to is the well-known maxim "The simplest answer is usually the correct one." It seems quite a bit simpler to say that the designers thought it would be cool if Noah survived and then added evidence to show that. The alternative is that they inserted the cryogenics chamber out of the blue for no apparent reason, made the pictures of the characters look almost identical for no apparent reason, AND purposefully changed the storyline during the translation for again, no apparent reason.</blockquote><p>I was wondering when you'd get around to using Occam's Razor. Sadly they changed the storyline for no apparent reason. An all-too-common occurrence in old imports.<br>

[Dorrinal Blackmantle]

<blockquote><i>Originally posted by Dorrinal Blackmantle</i><br>(snip cryochamber part)<br>Remember that it says "used", which is only in the context of PSI, as there hasn't been any fighting after that.<br></blockquote><p>There hasn't been any fighting... yet there is a military institution (Rudolph Steiner) and advanced weaponry!<p>Algo could probably use some saving more often than every 1000 years. After all, Lutz wakes up every 10 to check in on things <br>

[Benoit]

There hasn't been any fighting that treathened Algol itself.

[Dorrinal Blackmantle]

All right I'm not looking. You'll have to back that up with excerpts from the games!

[Baron Von Shleppinstein]

There may have not been any major fighting, but Hunters still exist to hunt animals and later to hunt Biomonsters. And there's always crime like kidnappings, thieves and murders <p>- Baron Von Shleppinstein

[Siren]

Not to mention that people tend to war against one another.

[Alis in Wonderland]

Lutz could have been revived for routine repairs to stuff around Algol... thre must be loads of pre-Phantasy Star 1 magic-powered systems that only ancient Espers know how to work.<p>still don't think it's noah though... i can see the logic of calling the spaceship Noah but calling both the spacehsip AND the mage Noah when they aren't related in any way is a little confusing. <p>

[Benoit]

<blockquote>still don't think it's noah though... i can see the logic of calling the spaceship Noah but calling both the spacehsip AND the mage Noah when they aren't related in any way is a little confusing.</blockquote><br>It almost looks like you're not understanding on purpose...<p>When PSI came out, obviously PSII wasn't finished (or even translated) yet. Probably still in the planning stages, even.<p>How was the PSI translator supposed to know that a ship named Noah would appear in PSII when he decided to change the name to Noah for whatever reason?<p>PSII got a different translator, obviously.

[Alis in Wonderland]

they really ought to get better translators. they messed up with the nei thing as well. nei weapons and characters called nei... and a word of power called nei.... and nei means 'not human' as well.

[Lord Khyron]

The Nei weapons isn't a translation error.<p>It's in the japanese PS 2, as well as the compendium.<p>It's also in the japanese PS 3 script, it being a word of power.<p>

[DezoPenguin]

I.<br>I'd say the "Nei means 'the human who is not a human'" is the load of crap. A genetic experiment to create the kind of being that wields the power Neifirst displays could certainly be named for a word of power in an ancient language. More likely Nei told Rolf that 'cause he was the first person to show decency to him and she didn't want to scare him off.<p>The "Arm yourself with Nei's weapons" line by Lutz could be one of two things, since we know the Nei weapons weren't named after Nei:<p>1) Lutz could be yanking Rolf's psychological chain--"Fight on, young Rolf! Wield the weapons of Nei against the evil forces that brought about her death!" and similar drek.<p>2) A genuine translation error. What I mean is, the Japanese construction (X) no (Y) can be translated as "The Y of X" or "X's Y" as appropriate by the context. "Seiji no hon" would be "Seiji's book" while "Seiji no Hon," as a title, would be "The Book of Seiji." So mayhap the translator read "The Weapons of Nei" and since Nei is a character in the game, thought it said "Nei's Weapons" without bothering to thing through the ramifications of the construction, grammatically speaking.<p>II.<br>On Noah/Lutz, I've been through this drek so many times over the last seven years it's unbelievable. Heck, I entered PS online fandom by e-mailing Mike Ripplinger to dispute his Noah-Lutz theories. It's possible by ignoring the Japanese games and through a careful parsing and forced reading of the text to maintain that Lutz and Noah are different people. I find that interpretation to be unpersuasive. More importantly, I find that interpretation unsatisfying, because it sucks the fun out of the idea of the return of the PSI PC generation after generation to defend Algo, and the pleasure of the character having one more go-round with Lassic in the Air Castle. This is the same reason I ultimately believe, for myself, that the Old Man musk cat in PSIV is Myau, despite PhanGarrett's cogent arguments that the text suggests otherwise.<p>III.<br>Dorrinal, since Rune says the First Generation Lutz put the Aeroprism in the Soldier's Temple, and since the prism was used by Rolf in PSII, how do you suggest that PSII's Lutz is the second generation? Did he sneak back to Mota and retrieve it, give it to Rolf, and then recover it from Rolf and put it in the Temple a second time? And if so, why did Rune refer only to the first Lutz's placing in the temple, skipping the whole second set of events?<p>(For the record, I believe PSII Lutz is the First Generation, that he is the same man as Noah, that Tajim gave Lutz the name Noah, and that Noah abandoned it only because he learned of Mother Brain's connection with the "Noah" spaceship--kind of like how a guy named, say, "Auschwitz" might change his name in 1946.)<p>IV.<br>On separate continuities/versions/etc. I just don't understand the refusal to see the two things as different. I mean, you see this all the time in literature. Somebody writes a story or generates a legend. Then someone else reproduces the story for another audience and changes things in a variety of ways.<p>For example, in the King Arthur stories, in the tale of Gareth Beaumains, Lynnette comes to Arthur's court and asks for aid in rescuing her sister Lyonors from the evil Red Knight. Gareth accompanies Lynnette on this quest, and she spends the whole time ragging him out 'cause he appears to be a nobody, then gradually comes to be nice to him when he proves himself over time. Gareth rescues Lyonors and marries her, and Lynnette marries Gareth's brother Gaheris. In Tennyson's "The Idylls of the King," when he retells the tale, Tennyson recognizes that to a latter-day audience, Lynnette is a far more interesting character than the generic damsel-in-distress Lyonors and suggests that Gareth married her instead. The first King Arthur book I ever read was a kid's edition by Roger Lancelyn Green in which he switched the marriages outright, Gareth to Lynnette and Gaheris to Lyonors. The sisters' names vary from version to version as well, and Sir Perimones (the Red Knight of the four color-coordinated brothers whom Gareth fights) gets chopped out of some versions of the tale entirely because the ultimate villain, Sir Ironside, is also a Red Knight and having two Red Knights is a little odd. How many different versions of Dracula or Frankenstein are out there? Or Jekyll and Hyde? How many re-intepretations of Sherlock Holmes can you find in the bookstore? Manga volumes are translated and edited (often with much fan outcry) to be less "adult" and more palatable to the American commercial market (and make more money).<p>The point is, many changes WERE made to all four of the PS games when they were brought to the United States. Most of these changes were bad; I mean, I've read Rebecca's scripts of the first two generations of PSIII and they're far more interesting than the English scripts. Indeed, many of the English scripts had to be shrunk down just because of the size of computer memory the text occupies (one of the most defining features of the PS games among the English-speaking fan community is those ubiquitous four-letter names, and yet in Japan NOTHING OF THE SORT EXISTS!). Some of those changes were superficial. Some were irritating (removing the reference to Ustvestia's apparent homosexuality in PSII). Some were substantial (moving PSIII 1000 years earlier in time, making Orakio and Laya contemporaries of Rolf, etc., and making the Orakio-Laya war a completely different beast from a storytelling standpoint than if it had taken place after drifting 1000 years in space). But they're there. The English games are different. They may be different in exactly the same way a dumbed-down children's version of Dracula is different from the actual novel. They may be inferior to the Japanese games. You may argue--with justification--that the changes made to the English games were poorly thought out and shouldn't have been made. You may argue, perhaps, that a literal translation should be done of videogames in general in order to preserve artistic integrity. But you can't just say that because something happened in Version X, than it must have happened in Version Y when it's one of the things that Version Y changed. You can't say that because Gareth married Lynnette in Chretien de Troyes and i...

[Benoit]

<blockquote>This is the same reason I ultimately believe, for myself, that the Old Man musk cat in PSIV is Myau, despite PhanGarrett's cogent arguments that the text suggests otherwise.</blockquote><br>Great. You ignore evidence presented by the games to uphold your belief. Take note that the scene in Myst Vale was not important at all, so it wouldn't matter if it was Myau there or not, speaking in terms of importance. But he isn't.<br> <blockquote>On separate continuities/versions/etc. I just don't understand the refusal to see the two things as different. I mean, you see this all the time in literature.</blockquote><br>That's not a valid analogy, since literature is spread out over centuries, and different writers. The games have the same authors (but not the same translators), and were released in the same era.<p>Yes, there were some changes, but not many that dramatically impact the games (except maybe for PSIII). Argueing that two separate continuities exist just because of some differences is stupid.

[Mizehrith]

The only things that changed from the Japanese-language versions to the English aside from language, of course, are names. The storyline remained intact as did the roles, effects, appearances and animations of the characters, items and spells in relation to the storyline. When we observe that Lutz' name was changed to Noah upon translation, we can conclude that Lutz' name was changed to Noah. He still had the same appearance, still played the same role in the story, still had the same parameters, still weilded the same weapons and spells and wore the same protective gear. In the same way, when we observe that the names of these weapons, spells and protective gear had changed, we can conclude that the names of these things were changed. They still had the same effects, parameters, animations and so on.

[Siren]

Correct. If it were truly intentional to make two different versions of the story, then we would see major, obviously intentional differences. <br>It would be foolish to say that though Sega made the efforts to make different versions of the game, that they still used the same art panels for the characters.<p>Edit: Nice to see you back, Mizehrith.<p>[size=small][Edit by Siren on [TIME]1115507870[/TIME]][/size]

[Mizehrith]

<blockquote>Nice to see you back, Mizehrith.</blockquote><br>Thank-you, Siren. <br>